El Chico in Temple Closing Tonight After 23 Years of Service

Temple's El Chico Tex-Mex Cafe, which opened in 1995, closes its doors for the final time Wednesday night (Aug. 1), a manager confirms.

We heard about the closing from a friend of one of our employees and called the restaurant at 3303 S 31st St. to confirm what we hoped was only a rumor. However, a senior staff member confirmed that the restaurant will have served its last customers as of 10 PM tonight.

We want to thank all the kind folks at El Chico who've partnered with us over the years. Along with helping us with other projects, they've catered our monthly employee appreciation luncheon for some time now, and it's always been absolutely delicious.

The employee with whom we spoke wasn't at liberty to tell us much, but did divulge that the property has been sold to another franchise.

A source tells us that franchise may be a Chick-Fil-A, which might indicate the CFA located across the street is looking to expand beyond drive-thru service. However, we have not received any official response to our inquiries concerning the matter, so that information remains speculative as of the publication of this article.